Thursday, August 28, 2008

Mariotti jumps ship

Posted by Craig on 8/28/2008
"I feel like I'm getting off the Titanic."

That's what renowned sports columnist and ESPN contributor Jay Mariotti said upon his resignation from the Chicago Sun-Times this week. Those were his parting words to newspapers, as he moves on to pursue new opportunities on the Web.

He's not the first and definitely not the last to switch from a career in print to online, but the fact that he's so outspoken makes him a particular interesting case study. He held nothing back in his most recent comments.

"Any paper without a quality, progressive Web site is dead meat ... [The] Sun-Times is dead meat," he told the Chicago Tribune.

He added to the Boston Herald that print media is “dead in the water if we don’t realize what’s going on."

Mariotti admitted to the Tribune that his former employer of 17 years is not at all happy that he's speaking out about the "weak" state of newspapers, but he wouldn't have it any other way. He said he came to the realization that the business was no longer for him when he was at the Beijing Olympic Games earlier this month and saw more Web outlets than print.

It'll be interesting to see where he goes and what this could mean for the Sun-Times as a whole, which has already been suffering mightily in recent months.

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